25 June 1983 - Unprecedented, Unexpected, Unforgettable

25 June 1983.... A match played between the greatest and most dominant team in cricket history and an emerging team, to lift cricket's biggest trophy..... The final of the third Cricket World Cup..

West Indies had won both the previous World Cups... Captain Clive Lloyd had scored a victorious century against Australia in the 1975 final, while in 1979 Sir Vivian Richards, the greatest player in ODI history, joined forces with Collis King to tear apart the England bowling attack.

This team was the favorite in 1983 as well... and why not, with openers like Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, followed by Sir Viv himself, Larry Gomes, and the charismatic captain Clive Lloyd.. and the "Fearsome Foursome" of Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, and Malcolm Marshall.... Who could have ever thought of winning against this team.

West Indies and India were in the same group, there were four teams in the group... Windies, India, Australia, and Zimbabwe... Every team had to play 2 matches against the other 3 teams... In the group stage, we won one match each against West Indies and Australia and lost one each to them.... After this came Kapil Dev's innings of 175 runs... which is one of the greatest innings in World Cup history.... West Indies finished at the top by winning 5 out of 6 matches, and India in second place by winning 4 out of 6. In the semi-final, India faced England... courtesy of Sandeep Patil and Yashpal Sharma, India easily chased down the target of 214 runs....

Now came the final.... For the Indian team, just playing a World Cup final was a massive achievement, standing opposite one of the most dominant teams in sports history.... What Pelé's Brazil was to football, and Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls to basketball, Clive Lloyd's West Indies was to cricket.... Even if we had lost the final on 25 June, no one would have asked why or how we lost because the opponent was West Indies...

The grounds of Lords, thirty thousand spectators... West Indies won the toss and put India in to bat.... With only 2 runs on the board, Michael Holding bowled Sunil Gavaskar.... Srikkanth and Mohinder Amarnath steadied the innings. Srikkanth scored 38 runs, which was the highest score by any player in that match... The innings folded at 183 runs in 54.4 overs... After that, the only question left was how quickly West Indies would chase down this score to finish the match and secure a World Cup hat-trick....

Balwinder Singh Sandhu's ball nipped back in, beat Gordon Greenidge's bat, and crashed straight into the top of the off-stump.. There was a brief surge of enthusiasm, which was quickly extinguished upon seeing Viv Richards walking out. After coming to the crease, Viv Richards tapped the pitch slightly with his bat and then decided that he would score 150 runs of the 183 himself... As soon as he arrived, he unleashed a flurry of boundaries. Madan Lal asked captain Kapil Dev to give him one more over.... Kapil Dev looked towards Madan Lal and said, "Go ahead" ("kar le")... In that very over, trying to dispatch a short-pitched ball from Madan Lal into the stands, the ball caught the top edge of Viv Richards' bat and went up in the middle of the pitch..... Kapil Dev started running backward... After a run of about 20 yards, when he caught the ball, there was a smile on his face, as if he were saying, "We survived" ....

Now hopes slowly began to rise... One by one, Larry Gomes, Clive Lloyd, and Dujon started returning to the pavilion.... No one could believe what was happening; after Malcolm Marshall's dismissal, the score was 124 for 8... The score reached 140 runs..... Mohinder Amarnath's delivery struck Michael Holding on the pad..... Every spectator present in the stadium was stunned, what had just happened... West Indies had lost the match by 43 runs.... The 24-year-old Kapil Dev held the World Cup in his hands.. We had defeated Clive Lloyd's West Indies in the World Cup final...

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